Study: A Decade of Evidence Shows Why Public Trust in Media Is Crumbling

The Conversation

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That trust in media is declining throughout the world is almost an unquestioned truth today. But researchers have found it hard to clearly demonstrate how we went from an era of high trust in 20th-century media to one of low trust in the digital age.

The ways people engage with media and where they go for trusted information are changing. From 2011 to 2024, my colleagues and I at the Glasgow University Media Group have charted these trends through a series of focus group studies.

Our findings, summarised in my book The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age, suggest that many people feel journalism today represents the interests of the powerful and does not speak for them.

For audiences of 20th-century broadcasting and press, trust largely rested on what we might call a leap of faith. With only a small number of news outlets and where organisations like the BBC were given exclusive access to politicians and experts there were few alternatives for audiences to turn to for information.

Most people didn't have access to other sources or direct experience of what was reported in the news though when they did, they trusted news reports less.

Traditional media outlets now rely on digital platforms to deliver their content, where it competes with an expanded range of alternative information sources.

Mainstream news continues to be led by the perspectives of government, business and economic experts. But digital platforms also allow the voices of social media influencers, independent journalists, activists and everyday users to be heard. This gives audiences easy access to perspectives which directly and regularly challenge the narratives presented in news.